Top Education Tools to Integrate with your Learning Platform

In this day and age, the demand for innovative tools to help with learning is increasing. Keeping up to date with new technology can be hard, and bringing it into the classroom can be even trickier, but there are ways to integrate educational tools with your learning platform that can benefit everyone.

To help you out, we’ve put together a comprehensive list of the best education tools you can use:

You may think Google is only useful for searching the internet, but what if we told you it could be tailored specifically to education? You’ll already be familiar with Google Drive, but recently, Google have released G Suite for Education with an inbuilt Drive, as well as Classroom, a free toolset that allows teachers to set and tack homework, give detailed feedback, and show learning materials. The best thing about this is that Drive sorts all of your files into folders, so you don’t have to spend time doing it.

Dropbox is a similar concept to Google Drive, but also supplies a way for students to submit assignments is they have an account, just by sharing a link with their teacher. It also allows for extensive feedback due to the commenting system, which saves time scheduling face-to-face feedback. The main perk is that you don’t have to worry about carrying a memory stick or emailing yourself files- it’s all in one, easy to navigate place.

With an abundance of apps all geared towards improving the way students learn, School Jotter has become the UK’s most popular school website platform. Scope to create websites, surveys to communicate with parents, rewards systems to spur on students – these are only a few of the features School Jotter has. As if it wasn’t already a learning staple, Jotter Mobile now allows users to experience some of these websites on the go.

Another hub of educational resource, Khan Academy provides a personalised learning experience. They aim to give free, world-class education to every student, and their easy to use website means that teachers can track the progress of their pupils. Their huge bank of educational resources, as well as the emphasis on personalised learning, means that Khan Academy has become a favourite of schools around the globe.

Keeping kids engaged has been an eternal problem of teachers and parents alike. When all they’re seeing is the same stuff every day, it becomes harder for students to take in all the information they need. This is where Kahoot! comes in. An educational gaming site, it allows teachers to create games, and kids to play them, all while enabling them to learn in a way that’s far more familiar to them. The company have even released it as a mobile app, so kids can learn on the go.Tools like this can really help drive up engagement, because homework has never been so fun.

The move to unconventional ways of teaching comes with a range of tools to help keep up with the new generation. Blogging is undoubtedly something that has emerged as being integral in developing writing skills, and it allows students to learn how to write for a more career-based setting. Edublogs is the leading educational blogging site. It prompts teachers to create a class blog, add students and encourage discussion and collaboration, and ultimately marks a new form of promoting creativity.

Best suited to secondary school students, CommonLit acts as an online library of articles, books, and any references a child might need as they start developing ways to write essays. It isn’t all heavy stuff though. Reading in any form is proven to help bolster creativity, as well as improve writing skills, and CommonLit is full of fictional reading too. Not only this, but teachers can track student performance, and give them the invaluable gift of learning about the world around them.

The shift towards an automated world comes with the increased need for people who know how to code. As basic coding is now being taught as low as primary school level, there comes a requirement for ways to help students understand it better. One of the most innovative tools on the market to tackle this is Wonder Workshop. Kids get given a robot- either Dot or Dash- which helps them stay entertained while learning to code. They can make them dance or roam about the room as they learn about robotics from the familiar comfort of an app.

In today’s world, there is a large focus on keeping healthy, and there are numerous studies to suggest that keeping a healthy mind and body is imperative to furthering a child’s education. With students starting to experience stress and distress earlier than necessary in life, it’s starting to interfere with education. Go Noodle is a tool that encourages mindfulness and movement from an early age, helping to stimulate their brains, keeping them engaged and happy in the classroom.

One of the oldest tricks in the book, YouTube has been helping out teachers for years. With a large store of educational videos, and options to create video playlists, its uses for education are infinite. It is often praised for its simple interface, as well as the ability to integrate clips easily into classroom presentations. This all means that kids can have an immersive learning experience from their seats.

11. Flipgrid

The use of video in the most modern sense comes to a head with Flipgrid, which makes the most of video in the same way Snapchat does. By providing students with a tool that is easy to use, one within their comfort zone, teachers can facilitate discussion in a different but exciting way. Whether you want to organise events, create your own social learning network, or persuade even the quietest of students to speak, Flipgrid makes this doable by enabling you to do it all on the same platform.

12. Audacity

The best things in life come free, and Audacity is no exception. Though not specifically aimed at learning and education, there’s nothing to say that Audacity can’t be used in the classroom. A number of students are auditory learners, and research has been done to show that learning with music or audio clips can help with language learning especially. This tool allows users to record, edit and splice recordings, so teachers can upload information for students to listen to at home or on the go.